Swallowing USB Drive

Swallowing USB Drive

APRIL 20--As cops searched his home as part of a corruption of children probe, a Pennsylvania man attempted to swallow a flash drive that he had dropped into a pitcher of water, according to police.

While police executed a search warrant Monday at his Bushkill home, Harold Moser, 46, told officers that he was “really thirsty” and asked for permission to get something to drink. Accompanied by a cop, Moser went into the kitchen and retrieved an orange pitcher, which he then began to fill with water.

At one point, a Bushkill Township Police Department officer looked over Moser’s shoulder and “noticed something in the bottom of the pitcher.” That is when Moser, pictured in the mug shot at right, reached into the pitcher and tried to swallow the black and purple item. A struggle then ensued between Moser and the cop, who grabbed Moser’s arm “to keep the item from being ingested,” according to a police criminal complaint.

The search warrant for Moser’s residence authorized investigators to seize computers, cameras, and any other items that can be used to take or store pictures. Moser was arrested two years ago for filming himself having sex with his girlfriend while his son watched from a nearby playpen. At the time, he was also reportedly being investigated for taking pornographic photos of a nine-year-old girl for whom he babysat.

Last year, a man in Secret Service custody succeeded in swallowing a Kingston flash drive in an apparent bid to destroy evidence of his role in a fraud ring. The four gigabyte device was eventually extracted from Florin Necula during a medical procedure at a New York City hospital. Necula subsequently pleaded guilty to three federal felony charges--including obstruction of justice for swallowing the flash drive--and is scheduled to be sentenced in June. (3 pages)

If the police are at the door put your flashdrive in the microwave oven and press cook. This will work for a laptop destoying the hard drive. It will be very effective if the hard drive is exposed to the microwaves for 60 seconds or more. The hard drive will spark and ignite a small fire in the laptop. The small fire will be contained in the microwave and will smell awful but the fire will not be a hazard to the dwelling. This is destuction of evidence or maybe even obstruction of justice which there is a penalty for. So you will have to weigh the penalty for evidence destruction against the penalty for the info you are destroying.

Would the Taser have corrupted the data on the flash drive?
I think dropping it on the floor and stomping on a few times would have been easier, or if the police were letting him walk around, stick the thing in the microwave and turning the microwave on.
Of course not having anything you don't want someone else to see on the drive would have been the best bet.

Not necessarily; most means of data storage can be fairly easily salvaged if you have the time, patience and technical expertise - which I'm guessing the 'law' does.The taser would have damaged the components but not beyond repair, similarly, the data would have been corrupted a little, but not enough to make the data unreadable.